I am miserable. I can’t bear
It. I hear a blind man’s steps:
Above me all night long he
Stumbles about on the roof.
And I do not know if these are
My tears that axe burning my
Heart, or are those which the
Blind man sheds without reply.
Which flow from his dull eyes
Down his faded cheeks, and
In the dead hour of midnight
Spread over the window panes...
Мне тоскливо. Мне невмочь,
Я шаги слепого слышу:
Надо мною он всю ночь
Оступается о крышу.
И мои ль, не знаю, жгут
Сердце слёзы, или это
Те, которые бегут
У слепого без ответа,
Что бегут из мутных глаз
По щекам его поблёклым,
И в глухой полночный час
Растекаются по стёклам.
«(Mosaic in a Moscow Cathedral) Thy face flushed red ‘gainst Batu’s fires, / That gruesome glower in eyes gone dead, / The rust-gold wings where faith respires / In sacred trepidation spread. Before thy stare in the Time of the Dread / Passed fools in skufia, tattered, worn, / Forever...»
«He passed the sloping garden, crunched through the grayish gravel, / Took note of reservoirs of water faraway marooned, / Sat on a bench and peered at Yaila mountain range that loomed / Beyond the new white house in sunglare-dazzle. Tail drooping, on one leg in bush nearby / Stood languis...»
«The tranquil gaze, your eyes so like a doe’s, / All in that gaze once loved so tenderly / On grievous days I cherish, keep, but slenderly, / For haze and mist your visage now enclose. The day will come when even sadness fades, / When reminiscence glitters, azure-blue, / In dreams with g...»
«I love to play the idle spy, / And watch, oblivious to all, / A swoop-flit swallow on the fly, / O’er pond as evening nears nightfall. Look there, see how she darts and skims / Along the lip of glazed-smooth mere; / I’m worried lest a ripple’s whims / Snatch up her blitzwing on th...»